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FeedField of Dreams
As Delaware County prepares for its pro soccer debut, our senior editor gets to the heart of the sport’s success on the Main Line.
(page 2 of 7)
Field of Dreams
Pro soccer makes its official debut in Delaware County this month. What can Main Line fans—and everyone else—expect?
In 1995, Major League Soccer had eight executives, four interested owners, zero teams and nowhere to play. Addressing the last issue, a group that included pro sports team owners Phil Anschutz, Robert Kraft and Lamar Hunt listed five cities on a white board: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
When MLS launched a year later with 10 teams, the league secured soccer in four of those five cities. Philadelphia was out mostly because it lacked a suitable venue. Veterans Stadium could’ve been a home, but it was imploded and the acreage paved for a parking lot. There wasn’t an interested ownership group, either.
Ten years later, over some good steaks, wine and conversation in a New York restaurant, a partnership known as Keystone Sports and Entertainment paved the way for professional men’s soccer to return to Philly—on the Delaware River waterfront in Chester.
“This is a market we always wanted to be in,” says Nick Sakiewicz, one of those pioneering executives and now the CEO and operating partner for the upstart Philadelphia Union.
The Union begins play March 25 against the Seattle Sounders in a nationally televised ESPN2 and the Spanish-only ESPN Deportes match at Qwest Field. The team has its first game here on April 10 at Lincoln Financial Field.
The 18,500-seat PPL Park at Chester will be ready in late spring, and team officials are taking the home-away-from-home opener as a positive. “Maybe it won’t just be 8,000 that come, but maybe 40,000-60,000,” says Dave Debusschere, the Union’s executive vice president and CFO, who lives in Wallingford. “Then, we’ll have the benefit of two openings.”
After 14 years as a league, experts say Major League Soccer is on the verge of a veritable explosion in this country. The Union is its 16th team, with 20 projected by 2012.
“We’ve been asked for years, ‘When is soccer going to make it?’ Frankly, that question is getting old,” says Sakiewicz, a Northern New Jersey native who was an All-American at the University of New Haven and a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team during the boycott year. “Soccer is making it with a slow, sustained, smart growth. We’ve tipped our hat to the great clubs around the world by incorporating what they do right while, at the same time, developing our own culture.”
Then you throw in Philadelphia’s culture. “It’s the reason Philly is such a great sports market and such a great city—its fans are passionate,” Sakiewicz says. “There’s that saying, ‘You can love me or hate me, but don’t ignore me.’ Well, you don’t get ignored here—especially if you work hard and play hard.”
Indeed, with a number of failures in its wake—like the 1970s’ North American Soccer League, which included the Philadelphia Atoms—it may well be professional soccer’s time to shine. Finally. After all, even pro football experienced growing pains before the NFL revolutionized the sport in this country.
“This is another steppingstone,” says Sakiewicz. “People look at the NASL (which collapsed in 1984) and say it was a failure, but they were pioneers, too. They created a moment in time for the sport’s evolution.”
The prosperity of the men’s and women’s U.S. National Teams in the past two World Cups in Germany and Korea has many believing the U.S. is an emerging entity in global soccer. By the end of the year, a committee will name two World Cup host sites for 2018 and 2022—and Philly is in the running. As proposed, the Linc would be the game venue, and the stadium in Chester a practice facility.
